Intranet predictions for 2010

By Toby Ward - 1. SharePoint will continue to dominate - All hail the king, SharePoint. SharePoint has become the single biggest, most pervasive intranet platform of all time (present in 50 – 60% of all medium to large-size organizations). While SharePoint is still minimally used for department and team level document sharing and collaboration, more organizations are looking to use it as the enterprise intranet platform.

SharePoint 2010, due to market in late spring, is vastly improved over
the former version, MOSS 2007. Many, many organizations will be
upgrading to 2010, and begin to use the new platform as the enterprise
intranet platform. What’s more, the cost of entry for taking on
SharePoint has never been lower as Microsoft SharePoint “in the cloud”
with SharePoint Online. SharePoint online already boasts more than
1,000,000 users, and unlike the previous SharePoint Online the 2010
version of SharePoint Online promises to “near feature parity” (with
only small exceptions) to the install version.

SharePoint’s market share will soar with SharePoint 2010.

2. IBM will finally become more aggressive with WebSphere Portal

As dominant and pervasive as SharePoint has become, the market leader
is WebSphere Portal (measured in license revenue. Although the
implementation and services revenue is undoubtedly much higher than
what the anemic Microsoft Consulting Services group can conjure).
However, unless you follow the portal market, you would think that
SharePoint is not just the leader, but a market killer.

Regardless, of how you measure success, SharePoint is a massive
success, and so to is WebSphere Portal, but you would never know it by
wading through the surface of most technology news and blogosphere
punditry. WebSphere Portal however is arguably a more sophisticated,
certainly more mature, product than SharePoint. And while IBM is happy
with WebSphere’s success, there are undoubtedly more than just a few
ruffled feathers by all the hype and attention SharePoint gets. Never a
company to sit idly by, and as innovative as ever (IBM received 4,914
U.S. patents in 2009, the highest for the 17th consecutive year), the
IBM marketing machine is not as aggressive as Microsoft’s. Nonetheless,
WebSphere is due for a marketing makeover and may get more attention
and marketing dollars in 2010.

3. Social media will become mainstream at the enterprise level

Social media on the intranet – collectively referred to as Intranet 2.0
– is now present on about half of all intranets (in the Western World).
Once a nice-to-have or a future wish, intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs,
wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream.

Despite the low cost of entry, most intranet 2.0 tools are merely
experiments, pilots or limited to a very small audience. Social media
has only been deployed at the enterprise level in about 25% of
organizations (see the results of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey
Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream).

Many of the experiments and pilots, the department and team level tools
will be rolled-out to the rest (or most of the rest) of the enterprise
in 2010. Still, more organizations that are sleeping through the social
media revolution will jump on the bandwagon. Look for an explosion of
user-generated content on the corporate intranet.

4. KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid

The “kitchen sink” design approach to the intranet home page is
standard, but it’s stupid. The more you throw on a page, the more you
confuse and distract users. It might work for Amazon.com, which relies
on brand and SEO, at the expense of user-friendly design.

People like Google for a reason – it’s dead simple. I’ve had the
pleasure to test dozens of intranet home page designs, in many dozens
of focus groups. The highest rated and appreciated home pages, are the
simple ones. The least popular designs are the busier designs that are
best exemplified by IBM and Cisco (very good, and popular intranets,
but for highly web-savvy audiences).

I’ve seen a trend towards simpler intranet home pages, just as we’ve
seen on the Internet, and the trend will really start to proliferate in
2010.
5. Outsourcing the intranet to the cloud

Although it is only the beginning, some companies will finally begin to
realize that professional hosts (ASPs) are better at hosting and
security than their IT department.

The “cloud” refers to cloud computing that, at the risk of
over-simplifying, is simply hosting – computer, server, software, and
other hardware and infrastructure hosting. You’re already a cloud
customer, probably many times over (someone is hosting your email,
website, blog, etc. In fact, 56% of internet users use webmail services
such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail – hosted email in the cloud).

Very few organizations have their intranet hosted in the cloud today,
but perhaps as many as 5% of medium to large organizations will look to
outsource their intranet to the cloud over the next year or so.

6. Death to the portal

Microsoft stopped calling SharePoint a portal solution sometime ago. To
Microsoft, and most of the rest of the technology world, SharePoint is
a web development platform.

Oracle killed all of its portal solutions. Now there’s just simply
“WebCenter Suite.” Ditto with eXo which is no longer eXo Portal, it’s
now eXo Platform.

Now the word portal hasn’t disappeared from the marketing literature or
the feature sets: all of these platforms and suites still have portal
functionality and features. Compared to five years ago, however, there
are very few companies left selling portal products. They’ve been
gobbled up by other products, other companies, or swallowed by the
platform.

The only big name left with a standalone portal product is IBM, with
WebSphere Portal. Per my second prediction above, look for IBM to give
WebSphere Portal a marketing makeover that might include the dropping
of the ‘portal’ name from the product label.

Prescient Digital Media...We assess, plan, design and build world-class intranets and digital workplaces. We are recognized, world-class leaders and experts in intranets, and have been for 16 years, with 200+ clients and dozens of Fortune 500 and big brand leaders